Adjustments

After doing some thinking, looking over my resolutions, and reading some helpful comments, I think I'm going to combine my categories of resolutions so that I go from 8 to 5. Five seems manageable. You can count them on one hand, and being able to do things with one hand is no small feat when you are chasing a toddler.

Ok, so I began with these eight categories in my life: physical, emotional, intellectual, marital, parental, social, organizational, and career.

First, I decided to eliminate emotional. After all, isn't my entire happiness project one big emotional goal? I created the category so I could put down goals like, "Don't complain" or "Don't criticize" (thereby ignoring every rule about phrasing things positively - whatever), but I don't think I need this anymore. And let's face it, those things can easily go into the marital or social categories.

Next, I decided to combine my career goals with my intellectual goals. Becoming a better teacher is usually about learning some new technique, rethinking some unit of curriculum, etc., so that's clearly intellectual. Right now I'm taking a required distance learning course in order to get my next level of certification, for example, and this could be the intellectual goal. It will bump "Read Newbery books" off the list, but I obviously need no smiley faces on my resolution charts to get me to read. Reading is what keeps me from getting everything else done!

Finally, I figured I could combine marital and parental into one category of family. Right now my parenting goals mostly involve making sure SP eats something besides crackers, so I can probably manage to work on that without putting it on the list, though I do like putting a smiley face somewhere if I get him to eat anything green. How do they just KNOW when something is a vegetable?? I don't understand it, but I figure it might be a survival instinct we are born with and that someday scientists are going to tell us that vegetables are actually killing us slowly. Then all the kids will say, "SEE?? We TOLD you!"

But I digress.

That brings my list down to physical, intellectual, family, social, and organizational. The organizational one is temporary, too, since I hope to actually finishing decluttering my house...you know, ever.

So I'm going to try managing with just five - that's one per weekday and time to catch up on the weekend - and see how it goes.

4 comments:

I love this list and this project of yours! I feel like all of this relates to the title of my blog but you are actually working to do it! And to sort it all out. I really admire that. I would find it really challenging to break all of these categories apart- they overlap so much and are so intertwined. I love the idea of focusing on one 'domain' each day and doing a mish-mash on the weekend. Can't wait to read more!

This seems like a very concise (teacher-like) approach, and I loved your phrasing, "You can count them on one hand, and being able to do things with one hand is no small feat when you are chasing a toddler." You're so clever :) And I think the tie-in to one day per week will provide focus. Enjoying the view of your journey :) And it was so great to see you "in person" for a few minutes today!

About Me

I'm an elementary teacher who is on maternity leave this year, which has given me not only lots of time to spend with my sons, but some time to read and write, and perhaps too much time for introspection.